Home » Lifestyle » “It Just Doesn’t Seem Right”: Michigan Farmer Forced to Dump 40,000 Pounds Of Cherries To Make Way or Import Crops

“It Just Doesn’t Seem Right”: Michigan Farmer Forced to Dump 40,000 Pounds Of Cherries To Make Way or Import Crops

What do you know about Michigan cherries ?

Traverse City, Michigan is located on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan superior. Nicknamed “The Cherry Capital of the World”, which is an access point for cherry farms. The regional airport is even called “Cherry Capital Airport”.

This area in Michigan grows about three-quarters of tart cherries in the US It also grows about one-fifth of its sweet cherries.

This summer, one of Michigan Cherry farmer posted the following on Facebook :.

By the likes of her, something is rotten in the state of Michigan

The Deal in Michigan cherries

unless you commercially grown cherries (or other products) in the US, you probably do not know anything about this.

according to the US Marketing Agreement Act of 1937 Agriculture the number of products an individual producer to sell is limited allowed. Michigan is one of the many districts regulated with strict limits for farmers. In fact, the Board of Directors Industry Cherry (ICBA) meets once a year to decide what the amount will be for the current crop year based on market conditions and projected crop yield of the cherry Michigan.

If a grower achieves successful harvest more than the allowed amount, the excess can not be used in any way in its natural form. Cherries on the “free market tonnage” can be frozen for another, less productive year or processed. In fact, they can be converted into juice, jam, or other products, but not sold whole. Even the sale at a roadside stall of all Americans are outlaws. Worse, the extra fruit can not be donated to, for example, a food bank or other charity.

In addition, producers are compensated by handling their “primary inventory reserves” annually, but not all foods that are bound to lose ( 1 ).

Who benefits?

The purpose of the regulation is to control market prices through supply and demand. The idea is that an excess supply for current demand lower prices, to the detriment of farmers. However, Santucci says: “My concern is that we are trying to limit the supply here, but all that does is increase imports,” ( 2 ).

He had buyers for its surplus this year, but was not allowed to sell. How does a free

market

The result of the Michigan cherry pie is as follows 😕 “. The imported product is reaching 200 million pounds per year and we are producing 30 million to 50 million pounds”

seems as if government regulations are not in favor of American farmers after all.

Some larger farms have the facilities to use excess cherries on other products (with other volume restrictions) so that the impact for them is somewhat reduced.

By 19459019 small farmers [] as Marc Santucci, this is not an option.

“These cherries are beautiful! However, we have to dump 14% of our tart cherry crop in the ground to putrefaction. Why? It just does not seem right … we are not allowed donate or any use cherries offset manner. “

Close inspection

BARC inspects cherry farms to ensure regulation is maintained and that no surplus is sold.

to Santucci, it is not just a matter of income, which is the beginning.

If he (as an example) is not allowed to sell their excess crops, the door is open for the gap between supply and demand to be filled by imports. He feels that this harms domestic farmers. Also it stresses that not opposed to the idea of ​​cherries imported if that is what the market requires.

The current legislation, however, was passed during the Great Depression, is outdated and no longer supports US farmers . He asked to contact the public products that feed on members of Congress to repeal the law that is fair and reduce waste.

Son of GMOs The answer?

Interestingly, one of the main reasons given by proponents of genetically modified crops is to improve the food supply in the world. Studies have shown that this argument does not hold . To this this report Michigan cherries is added as an example of how the food is unnecessarily difficult wasted.It rationalize the idea that traditional agriculture can not produce enough to feed the world’s population.

In this example, one forty thousand pounds of cherries would feed a lot of people. American (possibly the richest and over-fed people in the world) have the luxury of pull 40% of food they buy. Waste has become a sad part of our culture, but it is never too late to do the right thing.

waste has become a sad part of our culture, but it is never too late to save Michigan cherries.